


Take me back to the night we met

by Unbreakable_Vow



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 1x11, Alec Lightwood Deserves Nice Things, Alec Lightwood-centric, Homophobic Thoughts, M/M, POV Alec Lightwood, Post 2x20, Pre-Series, Self-Loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:08:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25032955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unbreakable_Vow/pseuds/Unbreakable_Vow
Summary: Magnus thinks that he and Alec met for the first time only a fortnight ago, while trying to give back to Clary Fairchild her stolen memories. Alec knows that he’s wrong, but he doesn’t know how to tell him.After all, how can you say to someoneYou saved my life when I was seventeen, without even knowing, but I still can’t be with you, without sounding like an idiot?[pre-series, 1x11, post 2x20]
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Unrequited Alec Lightwood/Jace Wayland, briefly Magnus Bane/Original Male Character
Comments: 11
Kudos: 126





	Take me back to the night we met

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic when the 2b was airing in my mother tongue, but never published it. Today I found it in my google docs, read it again, and thought “why not publishing it?”. So I translated it in english and here we are :)  
> It’s not beta-ed, so feel free to show me any errors. I’m trying to improve my writing
> 
> EDIT: thank you to @lamename who helped me with the errors the story had! Thank you!!!

The journey to Magnus’ home is easy to make. From the Institute it takes only an hour of walking, as the two endpoints of the route are close to the two sides of the East River that divides them, with the Brooklyn Bridge that makes the route almost straightforward. The streets are full of mundanes, life and light even at night, in typical New York style - busy streets full of locals and tourists who, even if Alec were to decide not to draw the invisibility rune on himself, would see him just as an anonymous boy. Even with his arms and neck full of runes, he knows he would pass completely unnoticed.

It's not a long journey either. It doesn’t tire his legs, trained to take worse types of fatigue during his patrols. In its simplicity, it is not even hard to remember: it's two large straight lines with some bending every now and then. When you arrive at Brooklyn Bridge, Magnus’ place is already visible, easily locatable among the many palaces that one can see from that distance, thanks to the wonderful penthouse it possesses. Wonderful, it is thanks to Magnus, who decorated it with a plethora of plants that at night emit a glittering glow, not unlike the glitter the man seems unable to live without.

Getting there, in short, does not explain in any way why Alec feels so very tired, why his muscles are full of fatigue, why his breath hitches on each step he takes, and why he feels an unbearable heat even wearing only a shirt in full open air.

It’s not even explained by what’s happening in his life right now. Sure, he’s obviously worried about Izzy’s fate, pissed off by Jace and his crush’s behaviour - and if there is still some jealousy that burns in him, while thinking about Jace smiling at Clary, then Alec is happy to notice that he can suppress it easily. His love for Jace is finally going away after years and years of torment, and he’s relieved by this, because he’s sure that seeing him and Clary together when Alec was still in deep would have literally killed him. 

If he’s to be completely honest with himself, he’s also terrified by the idea of seeing Magnus again after their... Can he call it a quarrel? A _goodbye?_ Whatever it was, Alec knows for sure that he will not be welcomed when he knocks at his front door.

But even with all of that, he doesn’t understand why he feels like this. 

He wouldn’t go if he had the possibility not to, but he has to do it for Izzy, this is what he’s been saying to himself during his long walk. He has to do this also for himself, he admits begrudgingly, because the reason why Jace is becoming the brother and _parabatai_ that he should always have been in his heart is because the crush that Alec had had for Magnus since he was only seventeen years old is now growing more than Alec can control, leaving no room for anyone else in his heart.

How ironic is it, Alec thinks, that at seventeen his dreams had been full of a Magnus who looked at him the way he did just a few days ago, in his home, when the two of them talked until sunrise. Teenager Alec would have done everything for it to happen.

And this is why, he finally admits to himself, he feels like he’s suffocating. Not the journey, not the current situation, but the memories this route are bringing onto the surface. Memories of when he was just a boy, of when, alone and afraid, he’d made the same route running away from the Institute to search the High Warlock of Brooklyn, to ask him to cure him from the sickness he had inside. 

He feels now the same oppression he felt that day. The day he met Magnus Bane for the first time. 

***

Izzy is certainly not the only person who has noticed his mood - Raziel, even a blind and deaf man could not help but notice - but she’s the only one who goes up to him and asks what the hell is going on. _The only one who has the guts to do it_ , Alec thinks, seeing her approach the punching bag that Alec, until just a second ago, was punching so hard that his knuckles are actually bleeding. Not that he had noticed it before.

The way in which she asks it is hasty and annoyed: typical of his sister, he thinks, to approach a clearly visible pissed off person with the same feeling. As if that ever solves anything. As if the anger that Alec feels inside will suddenly decrease upon seeing the same emotion in Izzy, and stop making him feel like he’s going to explode.

He loves Izzy more than words can express, but sometimes he wonders when his sister will finally grow up.

"Nothing’s wrong," he replies, wrapping his hands in rapid movements, and Izzy looks at him as if her eyes could pierce his brain and sift through what he's not saying.

"Bullshit," is the answer she gives, and Alec feels the anger, which was already too much, increase. He hadn’t thought it was possible. "You’ve been like this for days. Everyone in the Institute has noticed it. Mum has asked me twice what I did to make you angry - obviously, it must be my fault if you’re angry. Even Jace has asked - "

But Izzy doesn't finish the sentence, and Alec realizes why only when it's too late. His face must have betrayed how much even hearing his name hurts him, puts his senses on alert, makes him hold his breath in his throat so long that he feels like he’s suffocating. 

Something in him must have made Izzy understand what the problem is without him saying a word, and he feels like shit about it. If someone only needs to look at him in order to understand that he feels like that because of Jace, how the fuck will he ever be able to lie to his parabatai? Who feels whatever Alec is feeling? 

What the fuck possessed him to join himself to Jace like that - Jace, who is the source of all that suffering, and Alec has given him free access to everything he feels.

The answer lies in the person in front of him, who at the time had convinced him to accept Jace’s proposal. The person who’s now shocked, and looks at him with a mixture of such sadness and remorse that Alec feels the need to look away.

"Oh, Alec, I -"

"Not a word, Izzy."

"But you can't go on like this! You can't keep feeling pissed and frustrated just for hiding from Jace - "

"Enough!"

The silence that follows his word is deafening, and Alec is grateful that it is dinner time and that none of the other shadowhunters are around, because the scene he and Izzy are making at that moment is certainly not something that would be easily forgotten in the Institute. Especially from their parents.

Izzy keeps looking at him that way, and she doesn't need to say a word for Alec to understand what she's thinking - she feels guilty, he knows, for persuading Alec to become Jace’s parabatai, and she's at the same time sad for him for that unrequited love.

But it's not Izzy's fault, and Alec sighs before speaking. "I'm sorry," he tells her, speaking more honestly with her than he’d done ever since the parabatai ceremony. "It's not that I don't want to stop feeling like that, it's that I can't. I... I have to do something."

"Alec," his sister says, wet eyes and sad face, before approaching him and hugging him with a force that never fails to make him feel better. "I wish I could help you. I'm really sorry."

But they both know that there is nothing she can do.

***

Alec lets her drag him to the cafeteria, and when they get there they find Jace waiting for them. "It took you long enough!" he says, an arrogant smile on his face. “And Alec, you're feeling better now. I'm glad."

It is not even a question because Jace knows how Alec’s feeling, and he hates himself a little more for giving Jace the opportunity to see so deeply everything he feels. It is so terribly difficult to hide what you feel from someone who can read you so well.

His only luck is that Jace - and Alec feels terribly guilty for even thinking that - is so very unaccustomed to receiving affection that it is very likely that, even if he senses what Alec feels for him, he confuses it for brotherly affection without a second thought. Alec is sure that if it were not so, Jace would have understood his love ever since before they became parabatai, no matter how hard Alec tried to hide it.

All three of them reach an isolated table and, once they start to eat, they talk, and it's all so similar to what it once was, when all three were still children, that Alec feels like he can relax for the first time in days. 

He doesn't though, because even if it seems like that, nothing is as it was before: the effort it once took to hide his feelings for Jace behind a mask of indifference has now doubled, because he has to try not to think about it and stop his feelings from causing reactions inside. It is so exhausting that, after objectively little time, he excuses himself from the table and takes refuge in his room, too early to go to bed, where he tries in every way not to think.

Now an hour has passed since that time, and Alec has given up on the idea of not thinking just two minutes after having it in the first place. Instead, he’s focusing on finding a way to resolve the situation, one that is fast, because he cannot keep going that way for much longer.

He has to find a way to fall out of love with Jace.

 _And since I’m there, why don’t I find a way to not like men as well,_ Alec thinks sarcastically, a little ashamed of himself, for his thoughts edge on the absurd. 

Although it doesn't make him happy, it's not as if he feels ashamed about being gay. At first he did, as soon as he first started to understand that he wasn’t exactly normal - he was only twelve, he remembers, when he first started to notice how beautiful other men were, and how much that thought provoked strange reactions in him.

But Izzy - wonderful, intuitive Izzy, who already at that age read him as if he was an open book - had cornered him one day and forced into his brain that it was a normal, natural thing, and that all downworlder species, and even the mundanes, had no problem with people who wanted their same sex. 

In the years after that he had snorted and complained every time Izzy started with the same speech, but it was only thanks to her that Alec had not spent those four years flogging himself for something that could not change and that would never go away.

This does not mean that he’s happy with it, that it doesn't weigh on him a bit, or that he actively practices his sexuality. While Izzy and Jace, in the past few years, have had not qualms to find out what they liked and try new experiences - and Alec had felt, the first time that Jace had had sex, a jealousy so strong that he had vomited everything he had eaten that day - Alec had denied that part of himself, pretending not only that he didn’t feel anything for Jace, but also for men in general.

(Izzy judges all of this as a defeat, but Alec feels it as a victory: if nothing else, he muses, at least he is not forcing himself to have experiences with women.)

The result has always been, more times than he likes to admit to himself, an incredible frustration, and several times, in those moments when his hormones had shouted at him to do something, _anything at all_ , he had found himself thinking how much easier it would be if he was normal like everyone else.

So yes, he says to himself, if he could find a way to get rid of the love he feels for Jace, he would probably also search for one to make him stop wanting men. But both of those things are not possible. He has long ago accepted that not loving who you love, or not feeling what you feel, is not as simple as snapping your fingers.

He has not even had the time to think about it, not even the time to focus on the image in his mind, when an idea finds its way into his brain. It’s something that suddenly hits him, so strong that if he hadn't already been lying on the bed Alec is sure that he would have fallen to the ground.

 _It’s impossible,_ he thinks, _it will never work. Magic can't do that much._

And yet, even while he repeats it to himself, he cannot help but hope that yes, perhaps it is possible, that he must first verify, that how can he say that it is not possible without first even searching in the database -

He leaves the room and runs to the Ops Center before he has even thought about it rationally.

***

_“Warlocks are very powerful,” Hodge had told him, Jace and Izzy some time ago, during a lesson on the history of the downworld. “And their magical ability depends in part on how long they’ve lived, but it is mostly a natural talent. Some of them could raze entire cities to the ground without making any effort. Fortunately for us, they have a generally peaceful disposition, despite being demon’s spawn" - Izzy had snorted at the time, and Alec had kicked her to keep her quiet - "and they don't form a community like we, vampires, werewolves or seelies do. They have a sort of leader, generally the most powerful of them, to whom they turn in cases of war, and sometimes they adopt small warlocks abandoned by their mundane mother, but otherwise they live alone."_

_"Is there a leader of them here in New York?" Jace had asked, sitting next to them._

_"Yes," Hodge had replied, "it's the High Warlock of Brooklyn. He is called occasionally by the Institute to strengthen our defenses against external attacks, but apart from those occasions, he stays well away from shadowhunters. He doesn't trust us. I hope none of you will ever have anything to do with him."_

Those words, now that Alec is looking for the High Warlock of Brooklyn in the database, sound almost like a warning. A warning that Alec will not follow, going against everything he has been taught, because he is looking for him to find out where he lives, to go and make a request to him.

He doesn't know if magic can help him, if it can eradicate such a profound part of him, or if the High Warlock, with his distrust of shadowhunters, will listen to him or agree to help him. 

A small part of him is even afraid that the warlock will take advantage of that request to voluntarily harm him or threaten to tell everything to the Clave - he is ashamed of that thought immediately after thinking it, because he knows that he should not judge a warlock that he doesn’t even know only by virtue of the blood flowing in his veins, but it's hard not to have this first reaction when you’re educated to always think bad things about the downworlders. 

_At least I know it's wrong_ , he thinks, trying to console himself, _I will improve_.

And then he stops thinking, because the database returns the card of the person he is looking for, and the name Magnus Bane appears on the screen together with his photo.

And he’s _gorgeous_.

Alec wonders, absently, if his golden cat-eyes should frighten him, or if he should at least find them strange. Because overall - a smirk on his face, spiked hair with magenta highlights, a shirt with what seems a few buttons undone, and so many necklaces that, judging from the half-length photo cut, must go low on his chest - the resulting image is of a man so sexy that Alec feels almost dizzy.

All of that is not helping him at all.

Trying not to focus on the photo anymore - even if he fails a couple of times, because he can't stop himself from looking at him - he reads the information that the Clave has collected about him. 

He’s of Indonesian origin, date of birth unknown, owner of a club called _Pandemonium-_ and Alec remembers having heard it from Izzy several times, _It's so cool bro, every downworlders goes here, I've been there with Jace a few times, you should really come too_ \- and a series of affiliations with various Institutes in the world. He is very powerful, and there is a note at the end of his description that quotes _He demands exorbitant prices for his service, contact only if strictly necessary_ that has Alec lost for a whole minute because, fuck, how will he pay an _exorbitant price_ if Magnus even decided to help him?

 _One problem at a time_ , he says to himself, picking up the notebook and pen he’d brought from the room to jot down all the information. He debates with himself for a moment, but then decides to write down the address of the club too - in case Magnus is not at home, Alec knows that this will be the only time he can gather the courage to go with an idea so insane, so against the rigid obedience that has been imparted to him since he was born. Even now his brain is shouting at him that it's not a good idea, to let it go, but Alec knows he must at least try. 

He needs it, he needs to at least try. He has to stop loving Jace.

With this purpose, he also does something for which he knows Izzy and Jace would be proud of him - this, more than anything else, makes him understand how fucked up what he’s doing is. Silently opening his father's study, who fortunately is already in the bedroom with his mother, Alec starts the tablet up and steals from there the combination of the safe that contains all the treasures of the Institute. 

The combination is changed every time the Head of the Institute starts the tablet, because it takes only writing it on a recipe with the signature of one of the inhabitants of the Institute to make sure that all the money is given to whoever the recipe is signed for. Thus, regardless of what will happen this evening, Alec is safe until no one turns the tablet back on. But since that’s only done by his father when he starts working, he has until morning to pay Magnus Bane whatever he asks for.

He wonders, not for the first time when writing down the code, what the hell is going through his head right now. If trying to fix what's wrong with him - his love for a parabatai, and yes, his sexuality, which is so frowned upon by the Clave - is worth this. Worth stealing money from the Institute, running away in the middle of the night, trying to change a part of him that, for better or for worse, has made him the Alec that he is now, and which will undoubtedly form his future self as well.

He wonders if he will see himself different tomorrow, looking in the mirror and thinking of girls like all the other boys do, with desire. When he closes his father's office door, he wonders if he will be happy with his reflection.

 _Don’t think about it_ , he admonises himself, as he passes by the armory to take a sword with him - he may be mad, but he’s certainly not stupid - and he returns to his room to take his cellphone and jacket. 

He opts for the one with the hood, so as to hide at least part of his face during the journey. He will trace the rune of invisibility on himself, of course, but it doesn't help with the downworlders, and the last thing he wants, on the way to Magnus Bane's home, is someone recognizing him and going to report what he has seen to his parents - although he doubts that his parents may have any kind of relationship with a downworlder, he prefers to be cautious.

He almost hopes to meet someone during his escape from the Institute, anyone, from Hodge to Izzy herself, who would convince him that this is madness and that he should forget all about it. But nobody sees him, and so Alec runs away from the Institute, his destination the High Warlock of Brooklyn’s home.

***

Magnus thinks that he and Alec met for the first time only a fortnight ago, while trying to give Clary Fairchild’s stolen memories back to her. Alec knows that he’s wrong, but he doesn’t know how to tell him. After all, how can you say to someone _You saved my life when I was seventeen, without even knowing, but I still can’t be with you,_ without sounding like an idiot?

You don’t, that’s how. 

And so Alec kept silent whatever reference he could make of that night. He kept silent when he saw his photo on the screen when they were making up the mission to find Clary's memories; he kept silent when Magnus, saved from a member of the Circle thanks to the arrow that Alec was just in time to fire, whispered a _Who are you?_ that Alec wouldn't even have heard if he hadn't been so focused on him; he kept silent when Magnus looked at him, flirted with him, searched for him every way, admired him - he won't forget the image of those eyes fixed on his chest as long as he lives; he kept silent even when he talked to him about Lydia, that _Thank you for your advice,_ that hid another thank you, a deeper one - _Thanks for not letting me make a mistake that evening._

All things considered, he has done a good job, even if he’s not yet sure that it had been shame what had stopped him from revealing anything, at least initially. Could it have been pride? Or not wanting to give Magnus wrong ideas about his intentions - _but are they wrong?_ says something inside of him, _when you desire nothing more than to have him?_ \- or for something else he can't understand? It wouldn't be the first time he hasn't been able to read himself, but maybe it's the first time that he's interested in doing so.

But none of this matters, he says to himself. It’s only the walk to Magnus' house that has awakened in him the sensations of that night, making them more acute, closer to the surface than they had been in the two weeks after he and Magnus had met. It’s Alec's purpose - _if I don't find him at home I will look for him at the Pandemonium_ , he’s decided with a bitter sense of deja vu - that is bringing everything he felt back to his mind.

He went out of his way to never look for Magnus again after that night, to forget him. Because having not only love for Jace, but also an impossible crush on New York's most powerful warlock was something he couldn't afford. He had gotten rid of the stagnant internalized homophobia inside of him, yes, and it was one of the reasons he had not regretted his actions, but it could not happen again, and no other consequence had to arise from that escape, which would certainly have happened if he had tried to contact the High Warlock again.

But life, he muses knocking on Magnus' door, has strange ways of showing you how useless it is to make such resolutions.

***

A note materializes before his eyes as soon as his knuckles tap against the High Warlock's home front door.

Alec acts before he has even time to think, Shadowhunter training kicking in as soon as the strange movements coalesce in front of his eyes. He pulls out the small dagger from his belt and puts himself in a defensive pose, ready to parry an attack that, his brain tells him a second later, will never come, because all that has happened is that a piece of paper has appeared out of thin air in front of him.

Alec would like to be able to say that it is not nervousness that made him shake like that, but he would just be lying to himself.

The note, once he takes it in his hand, making sure that nothing else happens, is written with a calligraphy so elegant that it seems printed. It doesn't say much, just _I'm sorry, I'm not home. If it's not an urgent matter, come back tomorrow - possibly in the afternoon. If it’s urgent, you can find me at Pandemonium,_ and the signature of Magnus Bane, which Alec stares at much more than necessary.

It looks like that by noting down the address of the club he was more sensible than he thought, since apparently he will have to go there. Alec knows that his problem is not what Magnus Bane would probably call _urgent_ , but he knows with as much certainty that if he returns to the Institute, nothing will convince him to try again to meet the warlock.

So he picks up his cell phone, which illuminates and shows him the route he had set up to get from the Institute to Magnus Bane's home address, and sets up another one, this time from the house to Pandemonium. It took Alec about an hour to get there - an hour where, hood on his head and straight gaze, he’d tried to fight against his nerves, telling himself _What the fuck am I doing_ on repeat - and he hopes, for his mental health, that this new journey will not be as long.

His cell phone shows him a very short walk, barely a quarter hour, so Alec, taking a deep breath - _may the Angel help me_ \- walks towards the place.

***

He has not thought it through, he reasons, in front of the huge open doors of Pandemonium. Better to say that he has not thought about it at all.

He is a _Shadowhunter_ , Raziel bless, and a _minor_ . And _of course_ there are bouncers in front of the door, _of course_ the place is full of downworlders on whom the invisibility rune will have no effect, and _of course_ he cannot go there like a Shadowhunter to look for the High Warlock of Brooklyn without raising, at least, some suspicion.

Alec did not think this through.

He could come back, he says to himself, and in the meantime formulate a better plan. Or wait for the next afternoon, and introduce himself to Magnus Bane in his house, when they will be alone and there will be no blasted music to disturb them. Alec can hear it from outside the entrance - talking will be impossible in there now anyway.

And yet, even as he thinks it, Alec knows he won't. It can be more difficult now, more complicated, but Alec is like that - when he decides what to do, it is almost impossible to make him go back, his stubbornness that imposes _this_ and _now_ without him being able to counter it in any way.

So, bringing out the strategist skills that have been trained in him since he was a child - one day he will be the Head of the Institute, of course he must be a strategist - he devises a plan that will allow him to enter Pandemonium smoothly.

He must necessarily hide the runes, so first he takes care to remove the hood from his head and put it on the side of the neck, so as to hide the Deflect rune - he curses himself at that moment for having succumbed to the family tradition of having that rune positioned on the neck - and then, reluctantly, he decides to hide all his weapons in a spot out there. If he has to go inside disguised as a mundane, because this is his plan, he must not make anyone even suspect of him being a Shadowhunter, and the weapons of his race certainly do not go unnoticed.

So he finds a corner near the entrance of the club, a well hidden one where hardly anyone would venture, and hides his weapons in a dumpster, defusing them, so that even if someone will find them, they would have no way of using them. Unless they’re a nephilim of course, but Alec doubts that any of them except him is here.

He then opens his wallet, checking that it is still there: and it is, hidden in one of the pockets, the fake ID that Izzy has procured for him for his sixteen birthday. Alec, even today, does not want to know how she made it. _You look older anyway,_ she had said with a smile, _and mundane bars don't make such a fuss about age anyway. If you ever want to go to an LGBT friendly one..._

Izzy had left the sentence suspended, and Alec had thanked her, realizing that that had been one of her innumerable attempts to make him embrace his sexuality more openly, inviting him to have some experience. Alec, at the time, had seen the gesture as another nuzz from his sister, and had not thought about it much. He is now almost grateful to Izzy for that idea, even if he is sure that his sister would be furious knowing that he’s using his gift for the exact opposite of its purpose, which is to make him straight.

 _I have not yet decided on this_ , he repeats himself, because all this walking has formed in him a remorse about the idea of getting rid of his homosexuality that he can’t really explain. He has the stupid fear of losing himself, that if he lets Magnus Bane modify that part of him, Alec will struggle to find himself in the new person he will become.

 _Besides_ , he thinks, _there is a reason if I’m looking for a remedy only now, isn't there? If being gay had weighed so much on me, I would have thought about it before. No, the main problem is Jace. For now let's see about that._

His doubts momentarily calmed down, but with his heart beating madly, Alec heads for the club doors.

***

The queue doesn't take long to scroll, and the man who is checking Alec's ID - he's a vampire, Alec notes absent-mindedly, his hands hidden in his sleeves, clenched into fists in a conspicuously nervous gesture - takes a approximate look at his ID, looks at him with a raised eyebrow, and decides to let him pass.

Alec doesn't know if that vampire could smell his angelic blood- he sprayed a significant amount of perfume on himself before leaving the Institute, fearing to meet vampires on his way to Magnus Bane's house, but it may not have been enough. It doesn’t matter now, at least he’s inside - but if he really wants to become a good Head of the Institute one day, he admonished himself, he needs to plan better than this. 

And especially not to decide anything impulsively in full crisis mode after days of anger and frustration.

As soon as he passes the small hall before the dance floor, however, he completely stops thinking.

That place is _huge_.

Alec doesn't know where to look: whether at the human tide of people who are dancing with music that is really too loud; at the huge and long counter that takes practically a whole side of the room and where no less than ten bartenders are serving cocktails, with what could easily be the quantity of alcohol that all the members of the Institute drink in one year behind them; at the dancers who are on the cubes scattered around the room, intent on dancing in a way that is really provocative; or if at the raised floor overlooking the track, especially the corner where there is a huge black sofa which, Alec imagines, is a sort of private room.

By the Angel. Alec _really_ did not think this through.

Magnus Bane, in the note that Alec still keeps in his pocket, wrote that he was there that evening. But how will Alec find him in this chaos, talk to him with that deafening music, and convince him to help him?

Taking a deep breath to try to calm down, Alec thinks about what to do. Magnus Bane will surely have a sort of office in this place - every business has one, right? - and maybe they could talk there, away from the chaos, if Alec can convince him to listen. 

In order to do this, though, he definitely needs not to let him know, at least at the beginning, that he’s a Shadowhunter - _he doesn't trust us_ , he remembers Hodge's words. He will need to ask him to speak in private, and reveal his identity only after making his request, when they will be already alone. If at that point the High Warlock will want to kick him out and tell him not to come back again - and it's the best possible hypothesis if he doesn’t agree, Alec thinks - then Alec will go away and think of another plan to get rid of his feelings for Jace. 

Yes, it's a good idea ... but first of all he has to find him. Not exactly a simple thing in there. He might be in the middle of the dance floor - Alec doesn't even want to think about the fact that, if that’s so, he will have to go in there and make his way into the crowd - or at the counter to drink, or somewhere else. As far as Alec knows, he may have already gone away with someone, after all that's what people are looking for in places like that, isn't it? Someone to… _have fun_ with for one night.

If that’s the case, he has no hope of finding him; but if he’s still in Pandemonium, a good idea would be to head to the counter first. He will quickly throw an eye to see if Magnus Bane is there, and if he’s not, he will ask some of the bartenders where he can find him. It is a risky move, he knows he could attract attention, but he sees no other possibility.

Unfortunately Alec does not find any High Warlock among the customers on the counter. There is a great variety of people, from what he can see, but Magnus Bane is not among them - and Magnus Bane, Alec tells himself swallowing, is really difficult to confuse in the crowd. Alec is sure that if the warlock had been there, he would have noticed him right away.

He absently wonders what effect it will have on him tomorrow to see a man like Magnus. If he will stop thinking about him as beautiful. What he will think seeing a handsome man like him and not feel any desire at all.

Assuming that Magnus decides to help him, and that magic can really do that. He does not know to what extent his sexuality can be eradicated from him, if there will still be a trace of it, but what is sure is that from tomorrow he will see girls and he will be attracted to them, he will want to be with them sexually...

Trying to suppress the disgust that the thought has caused him, he approaches the bartender who is closest to him. She’s a very tall woman, dark skin, dressed in a short black dress - not unlike all the other female bartenders, so Alec deduces that it’s a uniform, however unconventional it may be - and with long black hair. He is serving a pair of seelies a very artistic red cocktail, and as soon as those two move off the counter Alec decides that his time has come.

"Hi," he says to the woman, adjusting the hood better to hide the Deflect Rune.

The woman turns around, and Alec can notice a plate with _Amina_ written on it.

“Hi yourself,” she says with a friendly smile. “I’ve never seen you here. I’m Amina.”

“A… Arthur,” he answers, remembering only at the last moment the fake name his sister had put on his fake ID. _I was going to give her my name,_ he admonishes himself, _stop being so nervous._

“Arthur, mh? Well, do tell: what can I get you?”

Alec wouldn’t take any drinks anyway, not with how nervous he feels, but he also realizes that he has no money anyway to pay for it. Except for the check he wants to sign to Magnus Bane, but he decides to not think about it right now.

“No, sorry, I just need information,” he says apologetically. “I’m just looking for someone. Magnus Bane. I was told he’s here.”

“He’s here almost every night,” Amina says with a smile. “He’s the boss. What do you need him for?”

 _Crap,_ he thinks, _now what do I do?_ “I’m… I need a favour for my brother,” he says, inventing the first thing that comes to his mind. _It’s vague enough to not be even a lie,_ he thinks. _Jace will be happy when I finally look at him the right way. As a brother._

“Mh, I see that you don’t want to talk about it. Fine. I won’t take offense,” she answers with a smile. “Anyway, he’s here, see?” she adds, pointing at a corner of the dance floor. “I don’t think it’s the right time to talk to him now, tough… he looks busy.”

Alec turns in the direction Amina has pointed, and there, in the midst of the hundreds of bodies that are dancing, he sees Magnus Bane.

That he’s kissing another man.

It is as if suddenly someone had closed his throat and made the earth tremble under his feet. Alec feels that he cannot breathe, that he’s losing his balance, that he’s one step away from a panic attack. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, because he is sure that see that scene again - and see how it will continue, he adds in his mind, because from what little he saw Magnus Bane and that other man did not seem to care at all about being surrounded by other people - would be too much for him.

He knows that downworlders have no problem with this type of relationship, but Alec had never seen two men kissing each other. And in that way, so… passionate. He is too distant to have a good view of the two, but the sleeveless shirt that Bane wears shows two impressive arms that must feel heavenly for the other man, tight in their grip as he’s now, his body pressed completely against that of the warlock -

Alec has imagined himself so many times in that situation with Jace that he would not be able to count them. He tried not to, because to him he seemed to betray the trust of what should be his brother, as well as his parabatai, but he had never succeeded. He’d wanted and desired that since he first realized he wanted men, and that has only increased since he’s fallen in love with Jace.

He opens his eyes even while thinking that he shouldn't, because even though he knows that he won’t help him at all, he cannot help himself. And predictably Bane and that other man are still there, intent on kissing and following the sensual rhythm of music in _unmistakable_ pelvic movements.

The other man - short blonde hair, fair complexion, a little beard from what Alec can see - raises his arm to grab the High Warlock's hair and squeeze it between his fingers, and Alec thinks how he would feel if a man would do such a thing to him, or if he were the one to do that. He sees Magnus Bane's hand move from the man's jaw and descend on the neck, then onto the collarbone, then creep under the shirt by slightly moving its collar aside, and Alec feels a shiver on his back at the mere idea of being himself in that position.

He’s never been more aroused in his whole life.

Another minute observing those two and Alec is sure that he will come into his pants - a thought so crude that, at least in part, awakens him from the trance in which he’s fallen. He has never felt this way, and he realizes, in a moment when he can barely be rational, that he doesn't want to change.

He can no longer think of the idea of not loving Jace, at all the stages of his plan that had formed in his head as the evening went on. Among all the doubts and reasoning that had been in his mind up to that moment, seeing Magnus Bane and that other man together, Alec realizes that the only thing he really wants is to be there, with someone. It doesn't matter if not with Jace, he’s sure that one day the love for Jace will pass, but he wants to find someone, a _man_ , who will make him feel like those two must feel at that moment, dancing so close and so provocatively together.

He can barely control himself just by looking at them. He _trembles_ at the idea of being in their place.

He must have stared at them, immersed in observing what is becoming a real live porn, too long, because as soon as Magnus Bane moves his arms to take off the shirt of the other man - Alec he is having a heart attack only at the thought of seeing it from that distance - that man turns in his direction and looks at him.

Alec runs away from there as if he had all the demons of Edom on his heels, Shadowhunter speed so trained in him that he is out of the club and in the middle of an unknown road no more than five seconds later. He has to stop to take big mouthfuls of air one after the other, and his heart beats so madly that it’s a miracle that it has not yet come out of his ribcage, but at least he is out of there, away from Pandemonium and the curious gaze of the partner of the High Warlock of Brooklyn.

 _Fuck._ _What the fuck did I just do_.

***

This time, unlike many years ago, Alec does not need to go to Pandemonium to find Magnus: as soon as he knocks, Magnus opens the door.

Alec looks at him and cannot help but admire him, because he’s just a man and Magnus is beautiful beyond measure - Alec has known this since he was seventeen, but each time he sees him it feels like he’s learning it for the first time.

He is beautiful even now, while he looks at him with a mixture of boredom and annoyance from the atrium of his house. Beautiful in his showy makeup, in his deep blue shirt, and in his hair spiked up. 

Alec would bet anything that Magnus would look beautiful even without all that. His heart yearns to find it out.

"What do you want?" he asks, and Alec doesn't know how Magnus could have put so much disgust in that simple sentence. But before he can blather an answer, Magnus turns and heads for the living room. Alec, perplexed, notes that he has not closed the door, so he takes it as an invitation to enter, even if not expressed, and follows him.

"Tired of fighting over the wedding guest list?" Magnus asks him, walking in front of him, tone halfway between bored and sarcastic.

 _For Izzy_ , Alec says to himself at that moment, feeling annoyance at that situation and at Magnus' behavior growing inside of him. "I need to ask you something."

“Will it take long?” Magnus asks, turning to look at him, expression annoyed. “Because you see, I have a life, and we don't have much to say to each other."

 _How dare you?_ Alec thinks irritably, taking a deep breath to try to calm down. _How dare you behave like this? As if I had hurt you. As if you cared. As if I wasn’t just a man like any other to you._

_As if you aren't the perfect picture of everything I've ever wanted. As if you were the one who has been tormenting himself for years thinking about me, and not the other way around._

“It's not about me," he finally says, with a calm he doesn't possess, watching Magnus turn his back on him, pouring himself a drink from his liquor cabinet. "Nor... any of that. It's about my sister."

"Ah yes, is it the fact that your adorable fiancé has put Izzy on trial for treason?" Magnus says, turning to look at him, the perfect image of nonchalance, and Alec, who until then had truly believed that he had only thought of his sister, feels those words like a cold shower. He realizes, at that moment, how selfish he had been to have felt everything that he had felt at seventeen, that evening, when his only thought during the journey should have been only Izzy. 

Izzy who’s risking to be deruned, removed from the Institute, alone and in danger.

Raziel, how can he be so stupid? He feels like he did on the outside of Pandemonium many years ago, full of self-loathing and hurt, thinking about how all of it had been a bad idea and how much he had risked by being so bloody selfish and emotional.

He had made the walk to the Institute almost on the verge of crying, hoping against hope that no one had noticed him, that no one would ever suspect a thing, and promising himself that he would never do something like that again. 

But he has broken that promise, because the same has happened today: he’s let the memories of many years ago take control of him, when whatever Alec has felt or feels now doesn’t matter at all. 

Magnus Bane is Izzy's only hope, and Alec has to ask, without his emotion clouding that purpose. He has to do now what he didn’t do then: get Magnus Bane to help him. 

Anything else irrelevant.

So, when Magnus continues with "What can I do for you, Alec?" Alec already knows what to do.

***

**A month and half later**

  
  


In the end, what leads Alec to tell Magnus what happened is nothing more than an ordinary circumstance, described during a chat in Magnus' apartment after having dinner, seated on the couch with Magnus’s head on his chest.

It is not as if Alec has tried to keep it secret, but nor did he feel the burning desire to tell Magnus about that particular day of his life. 

From time to time, a little reference to that story has come out. Like when Alec, during his first time with Magnus, had said _I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,_ gripping his hair tight, remembering the boy who run out of Pandemonium with that image stuck on his mind; or the night they made peace after the bad story of the Soul Sword and Valentine, when Alec has said _You don’t know how much you mean to me_ with tears in his eyes. 

But both of those references had been involuntary worded in such a way that only Alec could understand what he was referring to, so Magnus had never understood that there was a story behind them.

So, it has been two months since Alec and Magnus had known each other, and a little over a month since they’ve gotten together - even though so much has happened that to Alec it seems to have been much more than that - without Alec never telling anything to his boyfriend.

Until today.

"... and when Nymeria told me about that girl who some time ago showed up at her home, asking her to change her sexuality because she wanted to be normal, I swear I was on the verge of crying," Magnus is saying, as he recalls the afternoon he has spent with the High Warlock of Oslo. “I may be biased, but when I hear of a person being judged for love, I completely lose it. My heart breaks. I would never want to be in Nymeria's situation."

"I'm sorry," says Alec honestly, because he understands that poor girl only too well. He grips Magnus a little more tightly, and Magnus looks at him with a little smile. "Thank the Angel that I ran away that evening then, I would have made you sad," he adds immediately after, thinking out loud, laughing a little about what his teenager self thought would be a good idea to try.

He turns to look at Magnus, but the smile dies on his face. Magnus is looking at him with a strange expression, visibly surprised.

"What?"

"Which evening?" 

"Evening?"

“You said you ran away that evening. Which evening? What happened? "

"Ah, did I say that out loud? Sorry,” Alec says scratching the back of his neck, ashamed for his adolescent self. “Nothing happened, really. It was many years ago. I was seventeen. And I ran away before I could talk to you."

“Were you ... did you come looking for me?" Magnus asks, his voice barely a whisper. "Did you want to stop being gay?"

“To stop wanting Jace, mostly,” corrects Alec, “but for that as well. It wasn't that I hated it, but it was a nuisance. I thought being straight would make things easier for me.”

Magnus has a look so full of sadness that Alec reacts without much thought. He wraps Magnus in his arms and holds him close, Magnus' face resting on his neck and his arms that surround him at his waist.

It is one of the things he will never tire of, having Magnus in his arms. Feeling his chest press against his, his breath on his collarbone, those possessive arms that hold him close to them as if he doesn't want to make him go away - as if Alec will ever want to be anywhere else than Magnus' side.

“I’m so sorry,” Magnus says against his shoulder.

"It's okay," Alec whispers. "In the end I changed my mind."

"What made you change your mind?"

Alec can't help but smile at the memory, and about how Magnus will react by hearing the story.

"Seeing you," he answers, and, under Magnus' surprised gaze, Alec starts to tell.

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t live in NY, I’m not even american, so I’m sorry if this route doesn’t make any sense for a NY native. In my defense, I let google maps do almost everything. I just decided to made the Institute to be The Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, Magnus’ liar location is based on what we’ve seen on the show to be the nearest metropolitan stop, the High Street - Brooklyn Bridge Station, and Pandemonium is near Fort Greene Park.


End file.
